John Morton

Graphic design of the two book covers of Colby Prize winners in ovals on a navy blue back with white wavy design. Text reads, "2025 Colby Book Prize Winners - Congratulations!"

As announced at the close of #RSVP2025, congratulations are in order to our two Colby Book Prize winners, Andrew Lewis and @tejapusapati.bsky.social! You can read what our committee has to say about these fantastic additions to the field of periodical studies here: rs4vp.org/awards/colby...

Vice-Chancellor PhD Scholarship 2026 application form Apply for one of the studentships available to PhD students at Liverpool John Moores University, and join a fantastic, vibrant community of researchers.

#skyhistorians My uni, LJMU, have announced their VC PhD scholarships. Reach out to me if you are interested in doing something on homes; philanthropy/ charity; material culture and lived religion in the long c19th. These are competitive. You do need strong marks

www.ljmu.ac.uk/research/phd...

Breakfast (still jet lagged so early!) the morning after #rsvp2025 #voicesandvisions and it only felt right to buy a paper after a lot of discussion of the uncertain future of print... Brilliant conference and so nice to catch up with friends and make new ones.

... ok, reviews by writers have always promoted their own aesthetic & subject matter, but there is so little engagement with OV's intent here in favour of (imo fairly unsuccessful) mockery that all the fawning over the review feels quite misplaced. At best this warranted 2000 words, not 5000

I also think that the end result of the review is to promote aesthetically conservative and ultra self aware writing, set some way in the past (so the morality is easy to determine & nuance), which is basically what TC provides in his own (I think v overpraised) novel...

Yes - blurbs are always ott, and more often than not they're not especially reflective of what the author was trying to do imo. To focus on them for so long is to avoid engaging with both the intent of the novelist, but also really with his actual appeal, in favour of easy uncontested dunks

I agree - and with this, there needs to at least be some time dedicated to *why* the novelist might have decided to write in this manner. The Crewe piece is far too focused on (often failed) mockery rather than genuine critical engagement. It's not like TC didn't have space

W/O that, if you're not fully & immediately onside w/ the reviewer, the approach feels fundamentally unfair. It's actually made me more likely to check out Ocean Vuong's work than I was previously. & TC's own novel doesn't stand up that well when viewed in this unkind manner either imo 3/3

It's not like there wasn't space (5000 words? did it need to be so long given the sentiment is repeated over and over?). Was it more important to pile up quotations (some of which are *not* self-evidently bad), vs thinking about the wider context and rationale for the novel & choices taken...? 2/3

alt text: ‪London Review of Books‬ ‪@lrb.co.uk‬ · 23h Issue 47.11 is now online, featuring: William Davies on right-wing TikTok Andrew O’Hagan on Joan Didion Tom Crewe on Ocean Vuong Francesca Wade on the librarian Belle da Costa Greene Jenny Turner on Olga Tokarczuk and a cover by Lola Bunting. Read online at www.lrb.co.uk

Am not keen on this piece by Crewe. For a hit job like this to work it needs to at least acknowledge what the potential justification for the choices taken might be (& for the writer's popularity) - scoffing at the endorsements, 1 of which is imo intentionally misread, is not enough. 1/3

Ditto that this phrase will create hundreds of thousands of degree-equivalent post-a-Level opportunities outside of HE

See the call for @victorianpoetry.bsky.social’s 2025 Early Career Essay Prize (more info below & in the alt text) — please help me get the word out, with thanks!

A really good opportunity here to study Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia: the Birch Family Scholarship is available to a home fees applicant who has applied for a place on the Poetry MA and identifies as a writer of colour. Deadline: 30 May. Please RT! www.uea.ac.uk/study/fees-a...

Call for presentations for an online event, Dickens and Death! This will be livestreamed on June 7 and then posted on our YouTube channel June 9. Proposals should center on the theme of Dickens and Death. Submit proposals of 100-200 words by May 1, 2025 to Céleste Callen: celeston60@gmail.com.

Dancing in the Club - MJ Lenderman Version This Is Lorelei, MJ Lenderman · Dancing in the Club (MJ Lenderman Version) · Song · 2025

Absolutely love this MJ Lenderman cover of This is Lorelei

open.spotify.com/track/3yxJaR...

This is awful news. RIP

Brian Maidment, past president and friend of RSVP, passed away on Jan 28. This past summer, he spoke with Marysa Demoor for our Roots of RSVP series and reflected on a long career of studying mass circulation print culture. Read the interview in VPR: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl... @rs4vp.bsky.social

Table of contents for the new special issue, “Transition and Transformation”: Special issue preface by ERIK GRAY tracing Victorian Poetry’s recent transitions and celebrating the field’s debt to JOHN B. LAMB, journal editor from 2005 to 2024 LINDA K. HUGHES, “Queer Forms, Queer Grief: Reclaiming and Transcending Loved Remains in Tennyson’s In Memoriam and Michael Field’s The Longer Allegiance” MARY ELLIS GIBSON, “Sensation, Sati, and Retribution in Mary E. Leslie’s Sonnets on the Indian Mutiny” HERBERT F. TUCKER, “Compost Happens: Composition and Decomposition in Victorian Literature” BRITTA MARTENS, “From the Execution Ballad to the Dramatic Monologue: Criminal Confession Reconfigured” FLORENCE BOOS, “Morris the Skald: Icelandic Translation as Social Liberation”

Table of contents for 60th anniversary issue: JOHN B. LAMB, “Introduction: The Place of Victorian Poetry” ERIK GRAY, “Keeping Faith in Victorian Poetry” STEPHANIE KUDUK WEINER, “Reflections on Years in Victorian Poetry” LEE O’BRIEN, “Victorian Women’s Poetry and the Near-Death Experience of a Category” MICHELE MARTINEZ, “Undisciplining Art Sisterhood” HELEN GROTH, “Photography, Novelty, and Victorian Poetry” MONIQUE R. MORGAN, “Poetry, Politics, Possibilities” JASON RUDY, “Reaching Wider: Anecdotes from a Victorianist in the Australian Archive” LEE BEHLMAN, “Women and Light Verse: On May Kendall” MARION THAIN, “Reading Victorian Poetry as the World Burns” ANDREW M. STAUFFER, “Analog Intelligence” CHARLES LAPORTE, “Victorian Poetry in an Age of Cultural Secularization” LINDA K. HUGHES, “Whithering: Or ’Tis Twenty Years Since”

Victorian Poetry is thrilled to announce a new open-access special issue, “Transition and Transformation.” Guest edited by Erik Gray, it features contributions by Florence Boos, Mary Ellis Gibson, @lindakhughes.bsky.social , Britta Martens, & Herbert F. Tucker. muse.jhu.edu/issue/53644

The Patrick Leary Field Development Grant – RSVP The Patrick Leary Field Development Grant is named for long-time RSVP supporter, Board member and former President, Patrick Leary. It is intended to support one scholar or a team of researchers in cre...

Do you have an innovative idea for advancing periodicals research? Do you need 💰 to make this idea a reality? Consider applying for our annual Patrick Leary Field Development Grant! Applications are open through March 15. More details can be found on our website: rs4vp.org/awards/leary...

👋Hello Bluesky! We are now officially "live" and will regularly post announcements, tidbits, and other exciting news that will interest our members and friends across the sky! Follow us, tag us, invite your friends to join us and we will endeavor to do the same!

I'm so sorry to hear this. Brian was an absolute star.

RIP David Lodge, one of the great comic novelists and a literary critic v committed to public engagement

Best gigs were Nick Cave at the Dome and Idles at Ally Pally, and best DJ sets were literally every single one I saw at Waterworks esp Jay Carder/Ema/Yussh plus Interplanetary Criminal at Gala.

For songs, aside from stuff on those albums, "Right Back to It" by Waxahatchee, "Flight FM" by Joy Orbison, "Beta Bass" by Mance, "Empty and Silent" by Mount Kimbie, everything by Fcukers, and also (from last year but only heard it this year) "Bound 2 Falling in Dub" by Gresha (cont in next post)

Been a good year for albums - my favourites were In Waves by Jamie XX, Cascade by Floating Points, Tangk by Idles and Manning Fireworks by MJ Lenderman. (Cont in next post)

Doing my usual brief cultural highlights of the year. New novels I liked the most were Intermezzo by Sally Rooney and I Will Crash by Rebecca Watson, and I'm enjoying Isaac by Curtis Garner right now. (Cont in next post)

Galley Beggar Press is hiring!

We need a reliable, book-loving, Norwich-based administrative assistant for six months - starting January, 10 hours a week, and with the possibility of extending:

Closing date: 13 December 2024

Full details: www.galleybeggar.co.uk/new-page-34

(Please do share!)

The Palgrave Handbook of Neo-Victorianism This handbook offers analysis of diverse genres of neo-Victorianism, including film and TV adaptations of Victorian texts, authors’ life stories, and contemporary fiction set in the 19th century.

Very happy to say that my chapter on #neovictorian poetry has been published in the Palgrave Handbook of Neo-Victorianism link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

You can read 2 of my articles for free this month!

'Science in Neo-Victorian Poetry (2016) here: euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3...

'Wordsworth's Death and the Figure of the Poet in 1850' (2022) here: euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3...

I loved all the live music I went to but esp gigs by Sleaford Mods (Ally Pally), Orbital (Drumsheds) and Daniel Avery (Brockwell park), and DJ sets by Joy Orbison (Brockwell Park), De Crecy/Boombass/Falcon (Drumsheds) and Bicep (Margate).